Originally published July 2 2009
David Rainoshek Part I: Creator of Juice Feasting Shares His Journey to Health
by Kevin Gianni
(NaturalNews) This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni's Rawkathon, which can be found at http://www.Rawkathon.com. In this excerpt, David Rainoshek shares on his journey to health and a raw food diet.
Rawkathon with David Rainoshek. David Rainoshek is raw foodist and co-creator of juicefeasting.com.
Kevin: Welcome everyone here, I am with David Rainoshek and he's going to tell you a little bit about himself. David, welcome to the Rawkathon.
David: Thanks a lot, it's so great to be here.
Kevin: I'm so thrilled about this. What we're going to talk about today, we're going to talk about juice feasting; we're going to talk about all the things that you've done. But first I just want to give everyone an idea; why don't you tell me a little bit about where you came from and how you are, what you're doing now.
David: Yeah, I grew up in the city of Houston, so I contributed to the some of the pollution that was there and ate the standard American diet, growing up, and played a lot sports. When I was in middle school I got pretty sick and got acid reflux, but I didn't know it. I just thought I was a hungry boy. So I just kept eating food. And kept on playing state-ranked tennis all the way through high school and walked the Appalachian trail in 1999 shortly after college. And when I came back my cholesterol level was 270 and out on the trail you're walking like 8, 10, 12 hours a day, 45 pounds on your back through the mountains. 15-20 miles and you come into town; you eat whatever you want and so it was ice cream, pizza, subway sandwiches, you name it. When I came back I was still at the weight that I was when I left, but my internal environment was completely different. And three weeks after the trail, I crashed. I mean absolutely crashed. And it felt like I was having a heart attack.
For the next three years I was really sick. I tried to figure out what was going on and I couldn't figure it out. It was like, "I eat vegetarian, I eat an organic vegetarian diet. I should be doing OK." And I wasn't OK; I was a basket case. I had pain in my chest and I had pain in my shoulders and I could hardly move around. I spent about 50,000 bucks on medical bills and long story short I met a guy who I told about my symptoms and he said, "You need to eat raw food." And I said, "OK, I'll do anything."
So the next morning I got up and I had squash and zucchini and some carrots for breakfast. And I ate that, and after about three weeks I felt better; all my symptoms were gone. After $50,000 in I applied to Gabriel Cousens' Master's program in Live Food Nutrition and I did that and the rest is history. We're going to talk about all that today.
Kevin: When you went in and you had those carrots and you had the zucchini for breakfast, had you been doing that before or was this a new thing for you?
David: No, I had not been having breakfast for years, because my stomach hurt so bad in the morning. I mean, that was my biggest symptom, was that I had acid reflux disease, so my stomach hurt so bad I pretty much had to wait in the morning until I was hungry and then I could eat. So when I got up that morning and I had that I said, "This is an odd experience, I'm actually having breakfast." And it took about a week or so, and the agitation that I felt every morning of my life, went. And that was because I was dehydrated. The diet I was eating was toxic and it was dehydrating and making me feel bad. I'm a generally a really happy guy, so waking up agitated every morning since I was about five or six years old, was really hard on me growing up and I kind of had to keep it to myself. As I got older I said, "Well, I just can't talk to anybody then. I just need to kind of have my orange juice and wait, and then all of a sudden I'll start to feel better." And waking up and feeling happy and joyous for the first time in all those years, was amazing. I thought, "Well, this can't continue." And the next morning it happened, and the next morning and I've never woken up agitated again. So, raw food really turned things around for me.
Kevin: What made you go to get the cholesterol test?
David: Well, I was feeling really bad, so I had all my blood work done. I had loads of blood work.. I mean I had 150 different ways; I had my blood looked at, stool samples, x-rays, MRI's, you name it. I mean I really went through the gamut trying to figure out what was going on with my body. I just didn't really have a holistic perspective on my health yet.
Kevin: Right.
David: And so I thought, well my shoulders hurt so maybe it's my broken clavicle from my mountain bike accident in college. So they did an MRI there and did an unnecessary surgery and found that it healed up just fine. And then I couldn't identify the difference between my stomach and intestinal tract and my bowel. I didn't even have that kind of self knowledge yet. I mean, unbelievable. But I didn't. And a lot of us don't until we really start to look at our food choices and start to see how everything that we eat affects out body. So, it took me getting to the part of the spectrum of diet where you have live foods, for me to start to key in to all of that.
Kevin: Right. And when you took that approach, when you went to get the blood test, did you start to, I mean, did you go to a holistic practitioner, or did you just go to a doctor and say, "I need blood work?"
David: Yeah, I went to a place in Scottsdale, Arizona, which is definitely more holistic. And they had a compounding pharmacy there, so they could make very specific supplements for you and things like that. And they brought me more strongly into a vegetarian paradigm, which is OK. And we could talk about the spectrum of diet if you want, the spectrum of diet goes from fast-food, to Standard American, to vegetarian...no, fast-food, Standard American, whole foods, vegetarian, vegan, and then raw vegan. Plant-based is what we are calling this a lot now. And so depending on what your illness is, that will determine how far up the spectrum of diet you will need to go to heal that situation. So, for me, having had acid reflux since I was in middle school, and all the activity that I did, and all the meat that I ate when I was in high school, the place in my health that I got to required that I move beyond vegetarian to a raw vegan diet to heal the issues that I had.
Kevin: So let's talk about that paradigm that you talked about. So Standard American Diet is first, or fast- food Standard American Diet, and then on the other side you have the raw vegan. What is the goal,? I mean, is the goal, if it's on a paradigm like that is the goal 100% raw vegan or is it somewhere along the line or is it just optimal health? What's the deal?
David: Yeah, the goal is health. And your health is going to improve as you move up the spectrum of diet. And there's a lot of factors that play in, but one thing that is really important to understand, and I didn't really fully get this until just a few months ago, is that the spectrum of diet actually is a stages progression. And if you're in a westernized society and you've been exposed to a Standard American Diet, or a fast-food diet, you're kind of down there at that part of the spectrum of diet. It's going to take a while for you to move back up.
Now, I've been reading a lot of Ken Wilbur, so those of you out there who know who Ken Wilbur is. Ken talks a lot about stages-progressions. But, if you're at a lower stage, you can get a peak experience of a higher stage: meaning a peak experience, or a kind of a peak experience of it. But you're still going to have to go back down, and actually recapture those earlier stages and make sure that you've squarely centered on them, experienced it, gotten the benefits, gotten tired of it and then moved on to the next place when you're physically and emotionally ready for it.
So, I see that definitely in my life. I was definitely a fast-food and Standard American, more a Standard American than anything. And then I moved into whole foods when I got into college. Then, "Maybe I'm getting screwed here. I'm not really getting everything out of that white pasta that I thought I was getting, or that candy bar or whatever. So I need whole foods and I really don't want pesticides in my food anymore." So I moved into organic. After I squarely hit organic whole foods then I moved into vegetarian. "OK, maybe I don't want meat any more, maybe I don't want to damage the environment. I see what that's doing to my health, I really don't want that. I see where that's going. I don't want to go down that road." So, vegetarian. And then you realize, "OK, I've kind of gotten the benefits of not eating meat anymore, but that dairy, and the soy and the wheat aren't really helping so much, so I'm going to have to limit those things." And so you move up to vegan. And when you squarely hit on vegan, and you've realized all those benefits, you're like, "You know I'm cooking all my food, and the Max Planck Institute says I'm destroying half of my protein and a lot of the phyto-nutrients, dehydrating my food and all kinds of things by cooking it. That doesn't sound so good. I think I want better than that. I want more nutrients in my food. I want to eat less food and get more out of it." And so you move up to raw vegan.
Jameth Sheridan and I were talking about this the other day. And Jameth is the head of Health Force Nutritionals... And he was saying, "It's really important to understand the importance of vegan, because if you don't capture vegan right before you move up to raw foods, if you fall off raw foods you're falling way back to Standard American." So you really need to know how to access those really healthy whole foods, vegan, whole foods vegan cuisine, and if you don't know how to do that, you're going to fall off pretty badly. And when you fall back from raw foods into pizza and candy bars and white pasta and stuff like that, you're really going to feel it. And that's an education too, and that's fine, but it's creating more suffering than is really necessary, I think.
For more from this excerpt of the Rawkathon, plus 14 other amazing raw food interviews, please visit http://www.Rawkathon.com.
About the author
Kevin Gianni is a health advocate, author and speaker. He has helped thousands of people in over 85 countries learn how to take control of their health--and keep it. To view his popular internet TV Show "The Renegade Health Show" (and get a free gift!) with commentary on natural health issues, vegan and raw food diets, holistic nutrition and more click here.
His book, "The Busy Person's Fitness Solution," is a step-by-step guide to optimum health for the time and energy-strapped. To find out more about abundance, optimum health and self motivation click here... or you're interested in the vegan and raw food diet and cutting edge holistic nutrition click here. For access to free interviews, downloads and a complete bodyweight exercise archive visit www.LiveAwesome.com.
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